Since buying the Humble Introversion Bundle (a bundle of games that includes Darwinia, Multiwinia, DEFCON, and Uplink), I've been having consistent and hard-to-track down issues with starting Multiwinia (and DEFCON, for that matter). Every time I think I narrow down the problem, it pops back up in another way. What's been going on is that any time I attempt to start any of the tutorials, the game fades out and then sits at a blank black screen until I open task manager and end the process or even just alt-f4 it (which it seems strange that I can still do this considering it's a game. It only works when it's frozen like this, too).

I've tried tons of different things, from checking the firewall settings and disabling it entirely to disabling antivirus, sugarsync, all that kind of stuff. I've tried new downloads of the installer, countless uninstalls and reinstalls, testing on different compatibility modes, just about everything I can think of.

I actually have gotten the game to work in a few cases, too. One time was immediately after I downloaded the installer for the demo (and didn't uninstall standard multiwinia). I just installed it in a different folder, still in Program Files, and I didn't enter my authentication key. All I did in that case was attempt to start the first tutorial, and it magically worked. Then when I entered my authentication key and tried loading the same tutorial again, it stopped working. After numerous uninstallings and reinstallings or switches between "demo mode" and authenticated mode, I'm not any closer to figuring out what the main problem is. All in all, the situation is getting quite frustrating, especially since this looked to be one of my favorite games off the bundle.

------------DxDiag Notes------------ Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: The file ctaud2k.sys is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer. Sound Tab 2: No problems found. Sound Tab 3: The file ctaud2k.sys is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer. Input Tab: No problems found.

Hold on a second, I appear to have gotten it to work through a careful process of removing all traces of past installs from my computer, reinstalling it, remaining in demo mode, starting the first tutorial, quitting, entering my key, closing out of the program, re-opening, going under the single player menu (which does not list any options what-so-ever), hitting back, and then going under the tutorial menu. From that point, if I choose the tutorial, it works and loads correctly, and if I go back to the single player menu, all of the options are actually listed and, from what I've tested, they appear to all load correctly as well. So, I guess the problem is sort of solved. I got it working, anyway. With any future times of opening the program, I'll just need to go to the single player menu, back, and to the tutorial menu before I can do anything and have it work.

(I was extremely specific so that in case anyone else has the same issue I've had, they can hopefully recreate my solution exactly).